Celebrity News

Met conductor Leonard Slatkin gets the ax

After the fiasco of Monday’s “La Traviata” premiere, conductor Leonard Slatkin has bowed out of the Metropolitan Opera production for what the Met described as “personal reasons.” Tension between him and the cast climaxed with reports last week of “a screaming fight” with star Angela Gheorghiu at a dress rehearsal, The Post’s James Jorden reports. Critics slammed Slatkin’s conducting, with Out West Arts observing “looks of fear in the vocalists’ faces.” Sniffed the Times’ Anthony Tommasini, “I have seldom heard such faulty coordination between a conductor and a cast.” Slatkin conceded his lack of experience with the Verdi classic. “It seems like I am the only person [at the Met] who has never performed ‘Traviata,’ ” he wrote on his Web site. “But . . . I concluded that since everyone else in the house knew it, I would learn a great deal from the masters.” Three conductors will alternate at the podium for the rest of the run.